The rights to be free from exploitation, slavery, abuse, and murder, among those rights we humans declare for ourselves, are not accorded to animals by any government in the world.

Of all animal activists, there are few who operate in the rarefied air of Animal Rights. Those whose efforts are actually directed at changing law and government. And the most prominent of those activists is Steven M Wise. All the rest of us are working on animal protection and animal welfare.

Steven M Wise is President of the Nonhuman Rights Project. He holds a J.D. from Boston University Law School and a B.S. in Chemistry from the College of William and Mary. He has practiced animal protection law for 38 years throughout the United States. He teaches “Animal Rights Jurisprudence” at the Lewis and Clark, Vermont and St. Thomas Law Schools, and at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and has taught “Animal Rights Law” at the Harvard, University of Miami, and John Marshall Law Schools.He is the author of Rattling the Cage – Toward Legal Rights for Animals (2000); Drawing the Line – Science and the Case for Animal Rights (2003) Though the Heavens May Fall – The Landmark Trial That Led to the End of Human Slavery (2005), and An American Trilogy – Death, Slavery, and Dominion Along the Banks of the Cape Fear River (2009). A documentary about the work of the Nonhuman Rights Project that focuses on the first cases in which it sought common law writs of habeas corpus in four New York Supreme Courts on behalf of four chimpanzees will be released by DA Pennebaker, 2012 recipient of an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement, and his wife and fellow filmmaker, Chris Hegedus in late 2015.I approached Steven M Wise about the possibility of his doing an interview with Species and Class. He kindly agreed. This is the interview I conducted, which I am pleased to also publish on the Armory of the Revolution.

Garry Rogers's insight:

Respect and concern for nonhuman sentient beings is an important element of human nature. The element is activated at varying ages and by many possible events. Its development parallels every individual's growing wisdom. Perhaps our species' true greatest-achievement award is sapience--wisdom that we gain during our lives.

(LOWER LAKE, Calif.)—Blazes raging in forests and woodlands across California have taken the life of a firefighter and forced hundreds of people to flee their homes as an army of firefighters continue to battle them from the air and the ground.

Twenty-three large fires, many sparked by lightning strikes, were burning across Northern California on Saturday, said state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Daniel Berlant. Some 8,000 firefighters were attempting to subdue them, something made incredibly difficult by several years of drought that have dried out California.

“The conditions and fire behavior we’re seeing at 10 in the morning is typically what we’d see in late afternoon in late August and September,” said Nick Schuler,

Originally posted on TIME: The death of Cecil the lion at the hands of pilloried dentist Walter Palmer has sparked worldwide outrage, with virtual mobs tanking Palmer’s Yelp ratings, real mobs leaving angry messages at his office, and activists and...

Global biodiversity loss is intensifying. But it is hard to assess progress towards the Aichi Biodiversity Targets for 2011–20 set by the Convention on

Garry Rogers's insight:

GR: The argument for satellite remote sensing being necessary for conservation does not hold up. Satellites cannot see conditions beneath forest tree canopies. That's where most of the biodiversity resides, and that's where the soils that hold it all together lay. Understory plants and soil microorganisms cannot be identified, counted, or assessed in anyway from space. Direct space-program funding into on-the-ground surveys and get some useful information. Before it's all gone.

If you lived during the 1880s, when the globe was one degree Celsius cooler than it is now, you’d see far less in the way of heatwaves. But an immense vomiting of greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere and oceans by fossil fuel industry since that time has greatly multiplied these periods of extreme temperatures. So much so that you are now four times more likely to experience a heatwave anywhere on the globe at any given time than you were 135 years ago.

Heatwaves, depending on their intensity, can have serious consequences. The most direct impact is due to the excess heat itself. In the more extreme instances, heatwaves during recent years have featured an ominous capacity to hospitalize tens of thousands. These heat stroke victims, in the worst cases, perish. Such was the case for India and Pakistan this year where hundreds tragically lost their lives due to…

Among other practices, 50m game birds released annually for shooting negatively impact existing wildlife and ecology, Dr Mike Clarke tells landowners More than 50 million game birds a year are being released for shooting, putting increasing strain...

Another unexpected consequence of human activity. Buy a pet and wipe out a species. For many people, the harm is not only unexpected, it is and will remain unknown. The ignorance of the powerful falls heavy on the weak.

In the virtual worlds of climate modeling, forests and other vegetation are assumed to bounce back quickly from extreme drought. But that assumption is far off the mark, according to a new study of drought impacts at forest sites worldwide.

The Orinoco Basin extends across Veneuela and Colombia. The river's delta is covered with tropical rain forest. For many years now, colossal palm oil plantations have been encroaching on this forest.

"But the forest floor is relatively poor in nutrients and rich in oxygen, making it unsuitable for monocultures. Once the soil is depleted, the planters use artificial fertilizers to keep production going as long as they can, and then they move on. But there's another way. Planting many diverse crops in the same ground can help balance out soil use."

Garry Rogers's insight:

Forest soils are conditioned to support forests. In dense forests, large proportions of the nutrients are contained in the trees. Remove the trees and much of the natural wealth of the ecosystem is lost. Moreover, without their protective tree cover, soils wash away leaving behind little opportunity for forest recovery.

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